Customer Reviews
Only Paris can be that dangerous for American individuals - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 05 Jan 2008 
Discover Paris the way you would probably never see it. Garbage collecting trucks shown three times in the film. The French police that understands English & does not like nervous Americans, & they send their incognito agents behind the man they have more or less sent to hell. The US embassy obviously speaking with a forked tongue, being reassuring on one side & sending its secret agents behind the American citizen at once without telling him of course (S*** for S***head as Dr Walker says). Then a Statue of Liberty, the original mind you, seen & shown nearly too much. Underground parking lots that are crime avenues. Parisian zinc roofs. French taxis with black taxi drivers getting a flat on a highway. Then constant contradictions between tipping & not tipping in hotels. And alll kinds of dealings & dealers along the river's embankments, in alll kinds of underground structures, or airports, or night clubs, or bars, or whatever. A dangerous life for simple American tourists, but vacations remembered forever. Anyway in Paris only the French & the Arabs apparently die. Funny more than thrilling but well acted & that is a real pleasure.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Black Thriller That Makes You Come Back For More - By: DL Productions UK, 20 Oct 2007 
Imagine going on a business trip, to attend a medical conference; then find your wife has gone missing? This is what happened to Dr Richard Walker (Ford - The Fugitive, Firewalll) & he's alone, trying desperately to find his wife Sonia (Betty Buckley - Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, Monk just to name a few) & he doesn't reallly speak French.
He manages to get the authorities notified but his plight just seems to be going nowhere so he goes it alone, & find this mysterious Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner) who is more than willing to help as she has her own interests in this.
Soon enough, they find themselves in a dangerous position, hand over what they want for Sonia, & Richard gets very nervious, & Michelle feels out of her depth.
This is an excellent movie, & a classic Roman Polanski movie. The team work well, speciallly Ford's character as he's genuinely worried & makes the story what it is. Michelle is also great, her moodiness & anxieties come out well. We also see John Mahoney from Frasier, which is great. His role as an official for the USA is pretty good.
The relationship between Michelle & Richard is very interesting, & makes him consider his position with Sonia, whether he's reallly going to stay with Michelle if everything goes wrong, & sets him a moral dilema.
The story keeps you on your feet & you find yourself begging to find out what will happen next. Even better is that it's got the come back factor, leave it for a year & come back to it, it's nearly as exciting as seeing it for the first time.
The DVD is a bit of a let down, mainly due to lack of extras but if you don't reallly want to see much else than the film then you'll be very happy with it. The sound & picture are pretty good, but with age & HD now in play it does look dated techincallly. Still, this shouldn't put you off as it's excellent.
I was hoping for a 20th aniversary edition with loads of extras, but I doubt we'll see that!
Ford, Seigner, And Some Extra Baggage - By: Green Man Music, 19 Feb 2007 Frantic follows the story of a doctor (played by Harrison Ford) who is en route to a conference with his wife when there occurs a mix-up with their luggage. In fact, there ensues a big mix-up with everything as Ford's wife gets kidnapped by the owner of the other case, & Ford finds himself chasing around Paris on the heels of a vixen smuggler (Emmanuelle Seigner)and her unsavoury underworld connections to find out how he can get his wife back.
Although I've seen `Frantic' billed as a "Taut Hitchcockian Thriller" it's reallly far from that, there are too many Hollywood slapstick "lighteners" punctuating the storyboard for me to have been gripped in that kind of a way. Plus, with Harrison Ford sharing the stage & most of the story with Emmanuelle Seigner it's actuallly her character that I became interested in as the plot developed. Coupled with the fact that she dresses provocatively through most if not alll of the film, & even begins to backchat with Ford as if they were a long-established couple themselves ... could I be forgiven for forgetting that his wife existed?
For me it's the main flaw in the film, as the chemistry between Ford & Seigner develops in a way we don't see developing between him & his wife. So personallly I was kind of suspecting that Ford might not ever see his wife again, & that to compensate we might have he & Seigner's characters ending up together. But you'd have to see the film to discover what reallly happens.
I'm not a great fan of the action adventure genre & was lured into this by some false advertising as mentioned, however I did reallly enjoy it, even if I did temporarily forget about Harrison Ford's wife. Sorry, Harry.
fantastic - By: Steve O Shea, 03 Feb 2004 drama of the highest quality,from start to finish frantic keeps the viewer enthrallled,twisting & turning until the tragic ending.ford delights as the frustrated husband searching for his lost wife in a foreign city,finallly finding hope in michelle,before being reunited with his spouse.three things make this film,paris,michelle & finallly ford frustrated beyond belief at each turn of the way.he as always comes across as mr.dependable but also shows his vunerable side no more so than the scene in the night club.
alll i can say is see this film,top class acting,top class drama.
Classic mystery. - By: Martin I. Smith, 26 Jun 2003 With Harrison Ford as the star & Roman Polanski directing there's no way you can have anything but a masterpiece on your hands. Frantic starts simply enough with Harrison Ford & his wife checking in to a hotel in Paris. They realise they've picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport & in no time at alll Ford's wife has vanished. The genius of the movie is that the hero is just another guy & he is as baffled by it alll as we are. There are no huge Die Hard style gun fights & no James Bondesque ridiculous stunts. The realism in the movie makes it a lot more suspenseful & Harrison Ford, as always, is absolutely brilliant at playing the average guy in a screwed up situation. The film is similar in that respect to the great North By Northwest. Roman Polanski has made some excellent movies but I find this to be the most outright enjoyable of the lot. Frantic is one of the greatest thrillers ever made.
